


Riverdance

by furloughday



Category: Merlin (BBC) RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, Riverdance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-16
Updated: 2010-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furloughday/pseuds/furloughday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colin is the lead dancer in Riverdance. Bradley is his biggest fan. Katie is the female lead and Colin's dance partner and Bradley is a bit jealous of her at first because he mistakenly thinks something is going on between her and Colin. Bonus: Angel is Bradley's long-suffering friend who he repeatedly drags to see the show and stalk the stage door in hopes of getting Colin's autograph.  (posting kmm fills is prob 'not done' but i don't care.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riverdance

Now here he was, at the door of the dressing room.

Pages slipped past him, rushing up and down the halls to collect discarded shoes and leotards, transporting necessary hairspray and makeup to frantic performers. Bradley thought back to his first glimpse of Colin Morgan, the way the television screen had flickered once in the theatre lobby, and then focused on a row of dancers, each near indistinguishable from the next in their dark slacks and iridescent shirts, hopping from one foot to the other. He had only looked on momentarily before glancing about for the concessions stand. From outside, the rain had been falling in sheets.

"While we're here we might as well grab that drink, yeah?" Angel had stood by the television, shucking her long coat and drying her face with a sleeve.

Bradley had bought them each a hot tea and then they had sat on a bench waiting for the rain to let up long enough to make it to the tube so they could go home, maybe cook ravioli and eat it on the sofa and watch _Gavin & Stacey_.

A theatre was not a bad place to be stranded. It was warm enough, there was food and bored but innocuous ushers, and the audience was already seated inside. They watched the performance on the screen for awhile, Bradley somewhat impressed with the intricacy of the step and tireless control of each dancer and Angel completely blown away. At one point she clutched his arm and said, "Why haven't you taken up dancing, Bradley? Those dancers are lush, I need an in."

Bradley laughed, and looked back to the screen. It was then that the camera zoomed in, in rare moment of cinematographic genius for the theatre cameras, and Bradley found himself completely focused on one man, the main dancer it seemed, smiling as he jumped about, breathless and exhilarated.

Bradley's stomach dropped out, and he had never understood the expression before, because this was actual, vertigo-induced disorientation.

"Who is that?" he asked aloud. Angel looked up to the screen, sipping her tea. "I'm not sure, Bradley." she said.

By intermission they had played an epic game of twenty-questions and befriended the janitorial staff, and Bradley tried to shake the confusing feeling of being struck over the head with some sort of destiny. Then they had finally given up on waiting, and made it home alright, dashing from overhang to overhang and using their jackets to fend off the weather until they finally reached the station. And that was that, he forgot all about Riverdance and a certain Irishman.

And so what if Bradley was making a lot of disparaging dancing jokes recently? People probably didn't notice. He was, after all, an eclectic guy. And if Bradley had been spending a little time on the internet, it was for research mostly, only enough to find that he and the head of the dance troupe were roughly the same age, that Colin Morgan was some sort of child-prodigy who'd been Irish dancing since he was a wee lad in the bucolic town of Armagh. And if Bradley now Riverdance-kicked during football games, it was all tactic, yeah? A sort of lucky jig that ensured they won every match, like that one kid on Glee, and Bradley was the best forward they could hope for, they all knew it.

Just because the troupe was still in town the next week, and because he liked to finish what he started, he asked Angel to see the show in full this time. Overall the performance was incredible, he supposed, and the audience was really invested, which was always a good sign. But he couldn't get himself worked up about it, much, distracted as he was by considering that Morgan fellow. Who was he, really? He didn't seem the dancing type, seemed like he should live here in London, trying to make it big like one of Bradley's mates, or like he should be some background figure, not bleached pale in the spotlight and receiving love letters from thousands of fans. Bradley didn't know him at all. He left the show feeling hollowed out, somehow, uncertain and antsy.

His parents were not surprised at this burgeoning love of the dance. Last Bradley visited them he told himself he wouldn't speak of it, but by the time dinner was ready he was positively bursting to bring it up, When he casually mentioned Irish dancing his father had glanced at his mother as if to say: just hear the boy out, it's not as if it's a surprise.

And Angel was at first amused, and then impressed with his single-mindedness.

"This is cutting dangerously into our pub time, not to mention our drinks budget," she told him later that week, but it wasn't until she'd gone with him to two more showings in the greater London area that she really questioned his newfound devotion to the dance.

"Is it wossherface, then?" she asked on the tube, just as they were passing Elephant and Castle. Bradley put an arm around her automatically as the car jostled around a curve.

"Pardon?" he asked.

"Is that what this is really about? Katie McGrath? The dancer? I've been doing some research myself, Bradley." Angel looked up at his face, expression shrewd.

"No, this is definitely not about Katie McGrath." And if Bradley was gritting his teeth when he said the name, it was merely jealousy of the acting kind, why oh why wasn't he famous too, and all that. Not because she, undoubtedly a two-bit hussy although he had not been able to confirm this suspicion, got to share the stage with an individual who appeared at once so strong and so delicate that it made Bradley want to weep.

"Right, well," Angel said. "It's about somebody. I refuse to believe you're suddenly smitten with the dance itself, you're more of a classics to postmodern film-student kind of guy. I'm onto you, James."

The first time he went backstage had been a month ago. He'd left Angel on a bench with her mobile and a promise to be back in a mo, he just needed a look. He had smiled brightly at an usher and said he was going to meet his cousin, and it was easy as that.

Colin's dressing room hadn't been hard to find; again, it was just a matter of asking. The back halls of the stage were familiar, although quite more labyrinthine than those of the more minor theatres Bradley was accustomed to, and there were about forty people trying to move in the limited space. There were doors opening and closing, letting out shafts of bright light, and Bradley imagined he recognized some of the faces of the lesser dancers due to casual, if consistent, study of fan-taken photos and publicity shots of the cast. He even nodded at one woman he passed by, and she took him for a general fan and graced him with a bright smile.

Then he was at the door. It was white and the paint was peeling. He knew it was Colin Morgan's dressing room because there was a half-sheet of notebook paper taped neatly at eyelevel that said Morgan on it. The room wasn't permanent, of course - the troupe was moving on the next month, heading north to Edinburgh before looping around to Dublin and then Cork again - but the reminder set off an unwelcome squeezing in Bradley's chest. He also knew whose room it was by the fact that very few other dancers would have the privilege of a private room, and would instead dress unabashedly in the main green room that the hallway opened out onto just near the main entrance to the stage.

He stood there for a long while, one arm around his middle, looking at the fingernails of his other hand, not paralyzed exactly, just…waiting.

What was he doing here? If he met Colin Morgan, then what? The few interviews he had managed to find had left him nonplussed; Colin seemed like an affable guy, open to meeting the public, but Bradley had hardly been able to understand a word he was saying for the thick accent. He looked furtively up and down the hall, searching out other fans. No one seemed to be waiting for autographs, but then, Bradley had sort of snuck in, jumped the line as it were, and it occurred to him that perhaps a signed picture was something one asked for in the lobby, or round the back, when you had actually thought to bring a picture to be signed and when the dancers were good and ready to speak to fans, instead of still sweat-slick and clammy under their polyester button-downs, maybe drinking some sort of electrolyte-heavy sports drink and massaging aching muscles.

Bradley remembered then that Angel was waiting for him outside. She was a good friend, a lovely girl, interested in sixth-century metallurgy but who still had a good solid grasp on the here and now that Bradley had obviously let slide recently. He should probably be listening to her advice, namely her advice not to sneak backstage. So he left by a side door and circled around to the front of the theatre, tapping at the glass and beckoning Angel outside, knowing gutturally that he probably shouldn't enter the premises again.

He was at the same doors the next Friday. And their seats were still crap, complete crap, wedged in the back somewhere with a tall person of indistinguishable gender two rows down and obscuring a good part of the stage. The dance routine was familiar by now, and Bradley let his mind go blank, and just sort of stared at the main dancer for the entirety of the show.

After two plus hours and an intermission of fantastic yet repetitive foot thumping and hand-holding, and thinking how much he didn't actually care about the performance, or even the other dancers, Bradley was standing around, feet sinking into the red plush carpet of the front stairs, looking anywhere but the backstage door. Gwen left the restroom, and took in the sight of him. She scowled.

"Much as I do love this show, we've been six times now, Bradley. Go talk to the guy so I don't have to come here again," she told him sternly.

"I paid for you," Bradley said as he handed her her jacket. "Don't say I never treated you like a--"

"Go," she commanded, nearly immune to his charms after years of friendship, and took a seat on a bench once again. Bradley complied.

Now that he knew he could get there, now that nothing stood between him and meeting Colin Morgan but his own inhibitions, he agonized over whether or not one should go out of one's way to meet a semi-famous Irish person, a dancer for chrissakes, someone who he'd only ever heard speak in brief youtube interviews, and whose gritty photos probably left too much room for imagination. In short, Bradley was aware that Colin Morgan was more his own creation, some compounded version of Bradley's hopes and the traits he liked, all plastered onto a body that appeared far too lithe and a face whose cheekbones were perhaps massively overemphasized by the blue and red stage lightning that shone down in a way that tended to exaggerate shadows. He considered the ethical treatment of performers as he made his way back to the dressing room. He wondered if stalking was indeed what he was doing and, if so, whether or not it was ok so long as both parties had no clue what was going on.

Bradley gave himself two minutes and thirty seconds once he had reached the right part of hall. He checked the time on his iPhone, wondering if there wasn't a magic-eight ball app to tell him what to do, and then he actually felt woozy with stress. He didn't have stage-fright, hadn't ever walked out of a scary movie, never made mistakes due to test anxiety, but somehow this compulsion, this infatuation, was undoing him.

He made a sound of disgust that was thankfully lost in the hubbub of backstage, and he turned to go. Unfortunately, he walked all over a woman with a clipboard and Bluetooth device. She cried out and he jumped back.

"Who do you-" the woman started, straightening her clothing. Bradley raised his hands and took a quick step back and away.

"I don't even *like* Irish music," he said before the woman could fully reprimand him. He punctuated this with a frown, trying to communicate that this was her mistaken assumption.

He sidestepped the entire situation, somehow also avoiding a prop man dragging in a large mountain-backdrop for the next week's opening of The Sound of Music. Then he was jogging down the hallway the wrong direction, pushing through side-doors and onto the darkened stage. He struggled past the curtains, not a soul there noticing his presence, and then he jogged up an aisle and out into the lobby, earning a look of curiosity from Angel.

After that, the dreams began, the shut door a reoccurring motif, although usually it was Bradley pounding at the door rather than just leaning shyly outside. Sometimes the dreams actually did take place backstage, and Bradley was shouldering against the door, twisting the knob between sweaty palms and asking others to help him break in, he needed to see him, but other times it featured Bradley trying to crawl under a bathroom stall, or break into a bank vault where he knew the famed criminal Colin Morgan was looting England of her jewels.

The show was leaving, that was what eventually spurred Bradley to try again, the third time, alone, one last attempt because Bradley was a man of action, no one had ever accused him of being anything but outgoing, and charismatic, and maybe vulgar in a wholesome, drama-boy type way.

So here he was again, the final time, he told himself, lurking and hesitant with his heart in all of the wrong places, in front of a white door with a namecard that was achingly temporary.

The door stood slightly ajar, a thin band of yellow light glaring out. Bradley held his breath, and knocked.

The door swung open with the force of the rapping, and that wasn't how it was supposed to go at all, he was supposed to be invited in, like a kindly vampire or a very polite person. Bradley was met with the sight of a brightly-lit dressing room, all hushed and messy. Clothing was strewn everywhere: trousers pooled in corners, feather boas around lamps. Bradley felt a complete arse.

Colin Morgan turned at the sound, holding a green messenger bag in one hand, while he was struggling the other arm into a jacket.

"Oh," he said. Bradley didn't say anything, just stood there, noticing how the guy looked almost normal in the dark jeans and black t-shirt.

Colin looked at Bradley through lowered lashes, maybe nervous, kind of like he recognized him, like maybe he had dealt with rabid fans before and wanted no part in it. Bradley gave him a little smile.

"It's hard to recognize you without the…" he waved a hand. "Sparkles."

This, of course, was an outright lie, and rather embarrassing.

"Do you ever wear feather boas?" Bradley asked, frowning at the aforementioned articles of sartorial disaster. Colin turned to look where he was indicating. He turned back, smiling.

"Oh, no, no, " he said, voice spread thick with an accent that was definitely not English. "I share the room, see. There are weeknight performances of La Cage aux Folles."

"Oh, sure," Bradley said. "Anyways, I just wanted…um. Autograph. Could I have one."

"Right, right, of course."

Colin put down his bag, and finished putting on his jacket. He searched around for a pen, at first glancing around the room with quick darts of the eyes, and then theatrically patting down his clothing like one of Bradley's mates would have in an improv class and then in real life, all of them adopting a set of exaggerated gestures and using them in public places: where's the car?, I haven't got any money. Bradley scrambled to find a pen, also patting his pockets and then finding one in his own jacket pocket. He handed it to Colin abruptly.

Colin pulled an 8x11 head shot from a drawer, and waved away Bradley's protestations that paper was fine, no need to…then he pushed a collection of bottles and brushes to the side of the makeup counter, a tube of concealer falling to the floor with a rubbery plop, and bent over the photo of himself. Bradley was glad for the reprieve.

The clutter in the small room was overwhelming, stifling, but somehow it made Bradley's head swim like it was just after one of his own shows, that flush of belonging and achievement felt by he and his fellow-actors on a post-production high that would last well into the next day, all of them knowing that the following night they would be allowed to do it all over again.

There was a row of black dance shoes clustered against the wall, as if someone had lined them nicely but then kicked them aside while rushing mid-performance. There was a rack of costume shirts on hangers, and a ratty poster that couldn't have been Colin's, that must have come with the room that was only his for such a short time. On the mirror of the dressing table were a few stickies with scene notes scribbled on in ballpoint, and to the side of the mirror was a picture of Colin and Katie McGrath, tucked just under the frame. The photo was glossy in the shine of the naked lightbulbs. It was a recent photo by the look of it, still unbent and Colin was stood off to the side, thin, after he'd lost all that weight, so very recent then. He was smiling uncertainly and Katie, clad in one of the almost ballet-style leotards with a rosepetal skirt, was clinging to his arm and laughing at someone out of the camera's purview, maybe a fellow dancer as well, or hopefully a boyfriend. The sound of the pen scratching over the photo's surface drew Bradley from this brief rake of the room's contents. He looked down at Colin's backside.

"What do you do, then?" Colin asked, breaking Bradley's sort of anxious silence.

"I'm an actor," Bradley said. He laughed at the word, but then pursed his lips. "Just out of drama school, really. This past year. Stayed in London after that and have been doing bit parts in local theatre ever since."

"Here in London?" Colin repeated. He straightened up, and handed Bradley the photo. "Nice city, always wanted to live here."

"It's not bad," Bradley said, wishing he could think of something to say. Colin looked him up and down once, appraisingly, doubtlessly wondering why this stranger wasn't leaving.

There was an obvious smear of cover-up just at the corner of Colin's mouth, Bradley noticed all at once, his entrance having been so nerve-wracking that he hadn't had time to properly get a look at Colin head-on. Standing here as they were, now, kind of sizing each other up, gave Bradley the opportunity to notice this remaining makeup, and how there were traces of it just at Colin's jaw line, as if he had been in a hurry to leave, to maybe grab a drink with the lesser dancers or to get home to stretch and then sleep. He was also red around the eyes where he had obviously scrubbed at the eyeliner and wiped away the lotion he'd used to remove it. Bradley imagined applying Colin's stage make-up for him before shows and then being the one privileged enough to remove it again after the last round of applause.

Bradley felt like he had been dragged in out of the rain quite literally, by the cruel hand of fate, that one night just a month ago.

"Well," he said, having stood there for too long, maybe a year. "Thanks. Good to meet you."

He turned to leave, not banging into the still-open door, thank God. There was a weird feeling at the back of his throat, like he might need to go take some sort of vitamin and lie down for awhile. He was nearly out into the hallway, when a sound came from behind.

"Sorry," Colin said. Bradley turned to look back, eyes adjusting once again to the bright lights. He moved aside for another dancer moving past him who hollered 'Night, Cols' and put his hands in his pockets.

"What?" Bradley said, still unthinkably speechless.

"Katie's seen you." Bradley stilled, and waited as Colin adjusted his collar and picked up his bag again. "Twice, she said, standing outside the door, like you wanted to knock but couldn't. Blond, sporty, I think were her words. The real Prince Charming-type."

Bradley shifted from one foot to the other and Colin looked uncertain for the first time.

"That was you, wasn't it?"

Bradley stared at him for a moment, and then nodded wordlessly. He extended a hand and Colin walked forward to take it.

"I'm Bradley," he said. "Bradley James."

"I'm Colin Morgan," Colin Morgan said cheekily. "Buy me a drink?"

Bradley looked up at his face, noted the mocking there, but also the hope. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, embarrassed but relieved.

"Yeah, yeah, of course," he said, and they left the theatre.


End file.
